Tibetan butter lamps at the temple of the Austerities Cave
While we walked from the temple back to Daijokyo Buddhist House next door, the friendly blonde dog I had met a few times previously greeted us. I stopped to pet her, and she was so delighted that she ecstatically wagged not only her tail but also her whole posterior. I petted her and petted her and petted her and started to walk away, but she playfully pulled on my raincoat sleeve with her teeth, so I laughed and petted her and petted her and petted her more. Yvette, walking up behind us, said, “Looks like she’s made a friend!” There’s nothing like devotion from a cat or dog, and this one followed me to the hotel door. In India, I think cows are more likely to be allowed in the house than are dogs.
I’ve always had a fondness for animals and have been more comfortable with cats and dogs than with humans. I think the Buddha must have loved animals. Otherwise, I don’t think he would have had so much compassion for all beings, not only people. He wouldn’t have comprehended interconnectedness, and he wouldn’t have told stories of his previous lives as various animals, in the Jataka Tales.
The bus dropped us off by the dry, sandy Nairanjana River bed. I climbed off the bus and was walking in the middle of the street, to get around the bus, when a passing vehicle nearly ran over me, but Jagdish pulled me out of the way in time. I giggled or at least smiled about nearly getting run over, but I’d been giggling and smiling a great deal ever since I got off the plane in New Delhi. “You owe him your life,” Liz informed me. I wonder how many more times I’m going to get nearly hit.
We mindfully walked across the riverbed, with Shantum in the lead, carrying an umbrella as a parasol. I fortunately wore potent waterproof sunscreen and groovy circular shades. This was a silent meditative walk, and I kept track of raising my left foot and putting it down, then raising my right foot and putting it down. Occasionally we had to step around a narrow stream of water, but the riverbed was mostly dry, pale sand. Two curious little boys joined us when we were halfway across the riverbed, and they walked with us to the other side. It was like trekking across a desert: the sun was hot, and my sneaker-clad feet squished around in the sand. The grainy texture of sand entered my mouth, tempting me to spit; but I suspected I would only get more sand in my mouth, no matter what I did.
When we got to the other side of the river, children giggled at us. I was close to Val, and she explained to me, “They think we’re dressed like men,” so I laughed also, and more sand entered my mouth. We climbed the grassy bank, which separated the river from the fields and was somewhat shady with tall trees. Children ran up to us, giggling, and while I stood with Val and a few others under a tree, the children posed for photos with members of our sangha. There was much giggling and playing and goofing off. That is, until a skinny old man with a whip walked toward us on a ridge dividing fields. He yelled at the children and cracked his whip while trudging toward them, and they quickly stopped giggling and dispersed. I watched open mouthed. The children picked up large baskets and carried them on their heads, away from us, along the ridge of land between the nearest two fields. They had acted like children for five minutes.
Val and I had just discussed how the beggar children seemed to find women more approachable, and I had said, “It’s because they think we’re motherly,” even though I have no “maternal instincts” and can only be said to be nurturing toward cute furry animals and, well, the world in general. After watching the incident with the man carrying the whip, I said to Val, “It’s no wonder they prefer women!”
Feroza later said, “A lot of the children are older than they look; they may look like they’re five when they’re really nine.”
Valerie said, “They’re old souls. Born again, and again, and again.”
We walked along the ridge of earth separating fields, as we had the afternoon and evening before. In one field of dirt, a skinny turbaned farmer was using a plow with two white buffalo, and we watched him at work for several minutes. Shantum explained that when the Buddha was nine years old and sat under a tree to meditate at the edge of a field, and farmers were plowing the field, they used the same technology as this guy; it was done the same way twenty-five thousand years ago. We seemed to be in a time warp. I could see the little Siddhartha, with my mind’s eye, seated cross-legged under a tree and watching this farmer at work.
Halfway through our walk we stopped in the shade of a banyan tree between two fields, sat on straw mats, and had a sociological discussion over digestible biscuits and lentil snacks called moong dal.
Someone asked Shantum how homosexuality is handled in India, because she had seen a couple of transvestites in New Delhi, and Shantum explained in some detail. “The British made homosexuality illegal in the 1860s, and now there’s a movement to make it legal,” he said. “People aren’t actually put in jail, but it can be used against them, so they have to be very careful. If someone who’s married wants a relationship outside the marriage, they have to leave the country. It goes on in India, but it’s a forbidden topic.” That is reminiscent of the Deepa Mehta film Fire, which someone brought up in the discussion. Shantum said, “Anything you can imagine is going on in India,” referring not only to homosexuality but such things as prostitution, including male prostitutes and child prostitutes. “It happens, but it’s not a socially acceptable thing to talk about.”
Shantum said that his brother Vikram is bi, and he’s out of the closet as a writer, but he lives in England. “He has the status of a famous writer, so he’s more accepted than others; people in India respect famous writers, so he’s popular, and many Indians are illiterate and therefore wouldn’t have read any of his books even if they have heard of him.” Shantum mentioned that Vikram will be in India on the twenty-seventh, and I refrained from blurting out, “Can we meet him?”
Also, Jennifer commented on how women can walk around in India without getting harassed. She said she walks down a sidewalk in New York and hears comments like, “Hey, baby!” all the time. Oh, I know that experience; it isn’t just in New York. That is the reason I don’t like walking on city sidewalks, even if parks are considered more dangerous. Street harassment was a big issue with my living in St. Louis, although on Sundays I typically walked, weather permitting, to and from the bookstore where I worked. In Topeka, I can't step outside and be seen by teenage boys without their harassing me, unless they're accompanied by adults or females.
Shantum explained, “There’s a different attitude toward sexuality here than in the west, and everyone is considered brother and sister.” That explains why we’re addressed that way, which I find charming: it’s like the Indians who address Western visitors as “sister” acknowledge interconnectedness, how we’re all part of the human family and part of this planet. “Even a married couple is brother and sister,” Shantum said.
Shantum said, “I think it’s harder for women in the West,” because of all the pressure to look a certain way. In a pharmacy in France, he saw a poster showing a modern anorexic woman and next to her one of Ruben’s figures (who are at least my size, as is the case in artwork by other Italian Renaissance painters). Shantum said, “Here it’s a great complement to say, ‘She has a beautiful walk. She walks like an elephant.’”
“Don’t say that in the States!” Ann said.
Shantum went on to say, “In the West you’re bombarded with sex, with imagery that objectifies women, particularly in advertising—even an ad for toothpaste.” The discussion rather reminded me of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth. I remember that in Europe even billboards show people in their underwear, which I found rather shocking as a teenage tourist in the nineteen-eighties. Even in the States I’m glad I don’t watch TV and that the magazines I read are very different from, say, fashion magazines. To some extent, when living in the West you can block out the imagery that Shantum referred to, but not entirely. Rejecting mainstream media, furthermore, does not protect me when people see me and ridicule me because they agree with pop culture’s misogynist beauty standards. It is easy enough for me to have no interest in being a blonde and blue-eyed anorexic beanpole, but many misogynists look down on me because that is how they think females should look.
Around New Year’s, I was rather too worried about how I might be perceived in India. Given the contempt and ridicule toward fat women, but not fat men, that I’ve noticed in so many Bollywood movies, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about Indians finding me attractive and flirting with me; whereas I anticipated misogynist males insulting me to my face. When I come to such scenes in a Bollywood or for that matter Hollywood film, I tend to say to the TV, “Beauty comes in all sizes, so bite me!” This ridicule is supposed to be part of the comedy. Of course, such contempt and ridicule toward women, as if our appearance is our only significant trait, is the norm in the United States, along with the whistles, comments, and catcalls that, like so many women, I’ve experienced, thanks to stupid men who have very odd notions about how to attract women.
Before embarking on this pilgrimage, I should have asked myself why I was worried about body image more in India than in America. I think it is because plenty of people in the United States make me look slender, whereas before the pilgrimage I imagined correctly that India has many poverty-stricken people who are emaciated. Also, I’ve been more or less a recluse since moving to Kansas, so I’m not normally as visible as I am on vacation, even though in Kansas I do set foot in parking lots and on sidewalks, where I am visible to creeps. Still, in India I am definitely not a recluse, traveling all over and seeing lots of sights and people, and when you’re in a foreign country, you are automatically a diplomat and represent your country.
Ironically, my worries were mostly unfounded: since Indians are not obsessed with sex and don’t generally have the fascist beauty standards that cause eating disorders and low self-esteem and that convince women that they have to be skinny and blonde in order to be beautiful, in India I am judged less by my appearance rather than more. Again, this is related to interdependence and how people perceive us as sisters and brothers rather than “the other” or worse, as objects. Corporate America among other bad things, such as advertising, tries to fill people, especially women, with self-hate. Perhaps Bollywood and big cities in India are becoming influenced by Western attitudes, including the worst Western attitudes.
During our break in the field, Jennifer turned to Shantum and asked, “Are there feminists in India?”
Shantum said, “Yes, there are,” and I remembered the ecofeminist Vandana Shiva. She has edited at least a couple books, written excellent essays, and gotten some of her own book-length works published. And I seem to recall she’s an environmentalist and a member of a group similar to the Greenbelt Movement.
Reading Arundhati Roy, whether it’s her novel or her collections of essays, I can tell she’s a feminist too. And back in the 1950s a group of Indian women started an organization, a union for saving up money for themselves. I once read a magazine article in Ms. about village women in India who run their own local newspaper or newsletter printed in the local language, and they train women in photography for the newsletter. People in villages gather together and listen to news if they’re illiterate, and many people in such communities are.
The sangha continued walking, passing goats often, and I petted a brown kid that stood at the side of the path and watched us walk past. We came to some of “Monet’s haystacks” as I like to call them, where several men were threshing rice, although it’s also a job women do. They were delighted to have visitors and gladly demonstrated the art of threshing rice. Several sangha members, such as Yvette, Erika, Natalie, Dean, and Dornora, joined the workers. I didn’t only because of my wounded hand, from my fall in the Bamboo Grove. The threshers take a bundle and whack it against a wooden board set up like a table top, and the rice comes out and falls all over, to be raked up from the ground later.
Upon seeing the cameras coming out, an older man with a handlebar moustache reminiscent of Salvador Dali, in preparation for his photo shoot, earnestly smoothed down and twirled the ends of his moustache. Children approached and watched us, while everyone was laughing and having a good time. It would be pretty funny to be working in a field at your normal job, and a bunch of people come along and gawk at you and take pictures as if your ordinary work is the most fascinating thing. For us, it was. Another thresher posed for his picture high on a haystack, a temporary stupa of rice waiting to be threshed.
We came to a road lined with farms where as usual children joined us and we sort of resembled a parade. Thatched roofs topped the mud houses. In front of the houses were beautiful black cows with horns that curl forward, puppies and dogs, skinny chickens often with brown chicks scurrying after them, and fuzzy black pigs and piglets. Plenty of children were eager to get their pictures taken; as I raised my camera to photograph a farmyard with several cows and a thatched structure in the background, one little boy ran up and stood right in the middle of where I was pointing my camera, and he asked me to show him the picture afterwards, so I did. I tried to pet one of the beautiful black cows, and it backed away from me, much to the good-natured amusement of a guy who was tagging along like everyone else. “This is an Indian cow!” he explained. Yeah, Toto never barked at that kind of cow in Kansas.
We traversed to the end of the dirt road and came to a stone walkway, lined with seated beggars. The path lead up to a mountain and steeply winded up the mountain to a Tibetan temple built in front of the Pragbodhi Cave where the Buddha practiced austerities before saying, “This is crazy!” and meeting Sujata and coming up with the Middle Way. Slightly to our right, before the mountain, the bus was parked, and we climbed aboard to get stuff like our picnic lunch boxes and our straw mats. I also took my mirrorwork bag and put in it the lunchbox and my journal.
We headed for the mountain path and ignored the beggars squatting or standing at the side of the path, holding out hands and murmuring; though I wished I could do something to help, like magically make all their pain go away. We climbed the mountain up, up, up. More beggars pleaded with us on the extremely steep path, where I was out of breath and concentrating on my steps, for fear of falling. I reminded myself that I wouldn’t be walking on this steep path and out of breath forever, just for right now, and waited till we reached the top of the path and thus on firmer ground. We almost reached the top when we came to a booth where a merchant sold Tibetan prayer flags. My breathing settled down to normal, while we sat at picnic benches for our boxed lunch, during which I gawked in fascination at my surroundings.
The picnic benches were on a plateau in front of the temple. The temple was Tibetan. The monks were Tibetan. Hundreds of prayer flags were Tibetan. Even the dog was Tibetan. At least, I thought it was Tibetan. I saw two typical shorthaired and medium-sized Indian dogs, one white and one black, but also a cute little white dog with short legs and longer hair. I pointed this out, saying, “I think even the dog is Tibetan.”
Feroza said, “Stocky and strong like Tibetans.”
While we ate, I noticed the cute little white dog watching us with perked up ears and a lolling tongue, and I smiled and said, “The dog wants table scraps.” Mukesh asked me if I have pets at home, and I told him about my three cats. I did not, however, act like a proud parent by whipping out a wallet containing a stream of cat photos. How remiss of me.
The bright red temple was sort of like a layer cake, with a big lower level, up which a set of central stairs reached the second level with a railing and a sort of porch in front of more rooms, and above that were individual rooms that each had a little staircase. On the temple’s second level, monks were taking out prayer flags with help from a group of westerners and an Indian guy who climbed up a rocky outcrop of the mountain in order to attach a very long string of prayer flags at one end. Monkeys hung out on the flat Tibetan roof. If it had really been Tibet, they would have been yetis.
After lunch, we climbed the outdoor steps to the second floor of the temple, passed rows of butter lamps containing flickering flames, slipped our shoes off, and ducked through the three or four foot tall doorway leading directly into the little Pragbodhi or Austerities Cave. We went from the bright and pleasant atmosphere outdoors to the dark and confining interior of the cave. The ceiling was too low for standing up.
“Dangsiri is the name of a Hindu goddess,” Shantum had said as we approached the cave, “and it’s also one name for the cave where the Buddha practiced austerities.” To our right a couple of Hindu priests sat cross-legged, with their back to the wall, and they had a shrine and a big wooden collection box between them. Shantum told us about them earlier and had suggested that at least one person contribute, so that the priests wouldn’t be left out, and Gail volunteered to give them a couple hundred rupees.
Opposite the entrance to the little cave was an emaciated and larger than life gold Buddha. Shantum sat close to this statue, and the sangha gathered around and sat down till the cave was packed. Shantum told us a bit about the Buddha’s life, mainly what happened when he was trying out extreme asceticism and how wasted his body became. The description was really gross, for instance how he could feel his spine if he touched his stomach. We sat on our mats and meditated, but in the confined space with all these people, I sweated, and I’m not comfortable with sweating. Since I’m cold-blooded and don’t normally start sweating easily, I’m not sure whether it was really that warm or whether I broke out in a sweat thanks to my claustrophobia.
I visualized the Buddha, or rather imagined that I was the Buddha, sitting in that very same spot, emaciated and bony and meditating, but I unfortunately couldn’t transcend my awareness of uncomfortably sweating. Shantum ringed the singing bowl at the end of our meditation and said we could continue sitting if we wanted, and everyone except six of us crawled out of the cave. I looked at the statue again, closed my eyes, and did the same visualization and mindful breathing, in hopes that I’d be more comfortable with fewer people. Sure, it wasn’t so oppressive and crowded, but I still sweated and wanted open space and air. I did not reach an intense moment of emotion as I had at other Buddha places, despite knowing that the Buddha had been there in the cave, so I soon crawled out.
Outdoors, I took a deep breath and relished the cooler air and open space. If I hadn’t been too self-conscious about people seeing me do it, I would have stretched out my arms and flapped them like wings. I took several deep breaths and was about to take a picture of a carved and brightly painted Tibetan doorway, when I noticed Elly was in the room, so I crossed the threshold. To my delight, I saw a huge gold Tibetan Buddha statue on an altar to the left. A couple of beautiful and colorful thangkas hung on the wall straight ahead, along with a photo of the Dalai Lama.
I stepped outside and joined the group, who were all seated on the terrace a few feet from the cave entrance and listening to Shantum. He sat with his back to a tall chunk of rock with designs painted on it. The temple, cave, and mountain all merge together as one; I had seen a lumpy rock wall behind the big gold Tibetan Buddha. Shantum talked a bit about the Buddha’s life, when Siddhartha was at and near this cave, and we all sat or lay on our mats and got really comfortable. Valerie looked like she was having a siesta right in the middle of all of us, with her wide-brimmed hat over her face.
“The path is about being attentive to everything you do,” Shantum said. “I find Thich Nhat Hanh inspiring. I’ve known him for twenty years, and he’s progressed in his practice, he’s grown. It’s a practice of hope. We know people who’ve done it. We see our own practice.”
“Sometimes I write down what I’m aware of, and I see my progress over time,” Christine said. “The process is so slow that it seems like there’s nothing going on, but there’s really a lot.” That certainly describes my own practice. I don’t get the impression that anyone else notices any of the changes I’m experiencing, but I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t really matter what people think of me. People, particularly relatives, make accusations based on the version of me that they’ve dreamed up and completely overlook the fact that at least I’m trying to become a better person. Furthermore, they are incapable of entering my mind and have no idea what’s going on there. I also started a journal document called “My Meditation Practice.”
Although the Buddha approached several different teachers, it seems to me like he knew what he was doing, compared to me. I didn’t get serious about meditation until a few years ago, and now I have remorse for having spent too many years working in retail and trying to make ends meet when I could have been meditating and putting a lot more effort into getting my fiction published. Siddhartha started meditating at a slightly younger age than I and had plenty more leisure time.
The discussion led to the Mindfulness Training that covers mindful consuming, and the question of not only being a vegetarian but also encouraging others to be vegetarians. Vegetarianism applied to two of the mindfulness trainings: refraining from killing and mindful consuming. Someone had observed posters around Bodh Gaya: “Make Bodh Gaya a meat free zone.” Jennifer was dubious about pressuring others to not eat meat, as the Mindfulness Trainings imply, rather than keeping quiet about it when around nonvegetarians for the sake of not getting into an argument. I said, “Anti-vegetarians harass me, and I don’t want that to happen any more than it already does.”
“Just give them a graphic description of slaughter houses,” John said. I gave him a Big Smile.
On the topic of mindful consuming in the Mindfulness Trainings or precepts, Jennifer expressed an opinion that you can “take the Mindfulness Trainings and pass up on a slice of cake, but it’s still OK to go ahead and eat the cake later if you want,” just in moderation. I think that if you’re diabetic, you’d definitely pass it up, but for the rest of us her explanation made sense. To some extent there are different degrees for following the Mindfulness Trainings. You just do your best and recite the Mindfulness Trainings every month, or at least every three months.
Shantum’s comments about the Buddha going through a phase in which he was so shy that, for instance, he hid when children approached, or was startled when a twig snapped, reminded me of myself. I have on occasion panicked if the doorbell rang, or someone knocked on the door, or the phone rang. My typical reaction to hearing someone at the door is to want to hide. If I’m taking a walk when people are around, I wish I were unseen.
I sneaked up to the very top of the austerities temple and entered a beautiful little shrine room. I felt nervous and slightly shaky, thinking that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to come up here, as if I’d been invited to someone’s house and was looking through a closet. The room was completely silent, and I couldn’t hear anything outside it, not even people talking, and this added to the surreal atmosphere.
To my right sat a traditional Tibetan carved and painted wooden bench, and propped on it was a huge framed photo of the Dalai Lama. Above the photo hung colorful thangkas, or Tibetan paintings on cloth, framed with brocade. Straight in front of me, a wall-to-wall glass cabinet was filled with antique gold Tibetan statues. They included the sixteen arhats, plus a Buddha statue of maybe two feet tall wearing a colorful brocade cape, and a Manjushri of the same size and style swinging a sword to cut through ignorance and also wearing a colorful patchwork brocade cape. I stood still in awe, gazed with my lips slightly parted. I didn’t even think to take a picture, which probably wouldn’t have turned out well in such a dark room. I was up on a mountain in the country, not in a museum. It was quite enchanting and magical.
I eventually, very slowly and quietly, turned and went back down the flight of stairs, and down another flight of stairs, till I was in front of the many rows of Tibetan butter lamps set out on a very long table. Shantum and Natalie, with help from an Indian attendant, each lit a butter lamp and stood over it to pray. The attendant lit a butter lamp and handed it to me. It was a little gold bowl-shaped lamp containing butter, a wick, and a flame. I placed it between two other lit lamps on the table and gazed at the flame for a couple minutes, observing how it flickered and danced and watching the different colors in the fire. Regardless of how the Buddha disapproved of honoring only the fire god Agni, that deity should be given credit for having a sense of aesthetics.
A Tibetan-style Buddha statue inside the Austerities Cave Temple
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